Obama Speaks: On the campaign trail

BY: Wesley Martin
“No matter where you come from, no matter who you are, no matter what you look like, America is a place where you can make it if you try,” said President Barack Obama during a campaign speech to a crowd of over 3000 attendees last Thursday afternoon at Jacksonville’s Prime F. Osborn III Convention Center.
“Now, ever since I first ran for this office, I’ve said it’s going to take more than one year or one term or maybe even one President to restore the dream that built this country,” Obama said. “And the financial crisis and economic crisis made our job that much harder.”
“There are no easy fixes, no quick solutions to the challenges we face,” he continued, “but there is no doubt in my mind that we have the capacity to meet them and we will meet them.”
During last Thursday’s speech, Obama addressed his and his opponent’s plans on reducing the national deficit, job growth and universal healthcare.
“My plan would take half the money that we’re no longer spending on war and use that to pay down the deficit – use the other half to put people back to work rebuilding our roads, our bridges, our runways, our ports, wireless networks,” Obama said.
Obama also stated that he would like to create a “Veteran Job Corps” for returning servicemen placing them as cops and firemen in our local communities.
“Our opponent’s entire plan — the same plan of his allies in Congress — is to cut more taxes for the wealthy, cut more regulations for banks and insurance companies, cut more investments in things like education and research,” Obama said. “I am running because I believe you cannot reduce the deficit and deal with our debt without asking folks like me, the wealthiest Americans, to give up the tax cuts they’ve been getting for the last decade.”
Obama also added that Romney planned to give wealthy individuals another 25 percent tax cut while “gutting” our job training and financial aid programs.
On job growth, President Obama stated that the United States should also compete with other international markets to ensure high-tech manufacturing jobs are made available in America in the future.
Bea Thomas, Coordinator of the Escambia County Republican Executive Committee’s Minority Outreach Coalition, respectfully opposes many the incumbent’s political views.
“We don’t pass bills just to be passing bills,” Thomas said, “we have to look out for the whole body of the United States of America … we need to put things back into America’s hands and not sell ourselves short.”
Though Thomas would not divulge into distinct details, she said she believes some laws recently passed under President Obama, like The Affordable Care Act, should be repealed.
“I think we need to examine that again because [there are] some hidden things in there,” Thomas said.
Thomas said due to the document’s verbosity, many individuals failed to fully read it in its entirety. Therefore, according to Thomas, there has to be “flaws” with the healthcare act.
Still, other citizens see “Obamacare” as a godsend.
“The Affordable Care Act is a wonderful thing that many people in this area were delighted to see enacted into law,” said Susan Dombrowski, a local volunteer with the Obama re-election campaign. Dombrowski says she’s involved with Obama’s campaign because she believes in the president’s message.
“I believed in it four years ago when he was elected and … I couldn’t be more enthusiastic,” Dombrowski said.